TORY education secretary Gillian Keegan is trying to get next week’s strike action by 100,000 members of the National Education Union (NEU) outlawed, claiming that the union broke the anti-union laws with the timing of its ballot results announcement and how it informed schools.
Letters published by the NEU show that Keegan has demanded answers to a series of questions, claiming officials are ‘keen to understand better the timeline’ after the ballot closed.
But union leaders said it would ‘disappoint our members to learn that Gillian Keegan prefers a fishing expedition to constructive negotiations over pay and funding’.
The NEU announced last Monday that it had passed the turnout and vote threshold needed for industrial action, and has scheduled six days of strikes by teachers in England throughout February and March.
The results were announced at a Facebook live event at 5pm, and were circulated to the media and sent to the Department for Education at around the same time.
But in her letter, Keegan asked when the NEU had informed employers, when it received the results from ballot organiser Civica and why it did not receive the results on January 13, when the ballot closed.
She also asked the NEU to clarify whether it waited until January 17, the day after the results were released, to inform employers, and why the results were not announced sooner on the Monday.
In a response to Keegan, NEU joint general secretaries Dr Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney said it would ‘stretch credulity to suggest the union did not take all steps as were reasonably necessary to ensure all members and relevant employers were informed of the results of the ballot as soon as was reasonably practicable.
‘We believe the union has been completely transparent in the way it has announced and reported the ballot results.’
The union said it had informed the DfE ‘shortly before 5pm’ on January 16 of the ballot results, and the department ‘then informed schools (and hence employers) that the ballot results would lead to strike action’ in a post on its Education Hub blog.
The results were also subsequently announced at a Facebook live event, which was watched by 100,000 people, ‘including most, if not all, representatives of relevant employers,’ the NEU said.
‘We are confident that all relevant employers became aware of the results of the ballots by these means at or shortly after 5pm on Monday January 16.’
Bousted and Courtney said the NEU was ‘obviously unable to given individual written notice to employers until it had received the scrutineer’s report’.
- The NAHT school leaders’ union will re-ballot its members for industrial action, its leader has confirmed, after its previous vote failed to reach the turnout threshold required.
The organisation said last week that it was considering going back to its membership after just 42 per cent of eligible members voted in its last ballot, short of the 50 per cent required by law.
NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman has now confirmed that the union is ‘committed to balloting again’, although it will wait until talks with the government either come to an end or break down.
Of those members who did vote, 64 per cent of those supported strikes and 87 per cent backed action short of a strike.
The NASUWT teaching union, which also fell short of the turnout threshold, has also said it will re-ballot its members.